


The Innocent Truth

by faerytold (orphan_account)



Category: Wanted (Australia TV 2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 08:07:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20945081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/faerytold
Summary: Maxine takes a press call.





	The Innocent Truth

It’s a month after Max lets the two women escape before the press gets enough information to put two and two together. They escaped what should have been a sure thing, and then Max was off the case. Never mind that it’s officially written that she resigned, they decide there has to be more. To their credit, they aren’t wrong. She gets requests for interviews, surprise visits by camera crews, the works from the news junkets trying to get the story out of her. Not that it’s an on-slaught by any means, but it’s much more than she’s used to being in the spotlight. Then, she gets a call on her phone from a reporter.

It started off like most others. “Hi, I’m Dawn Winters, and I’m writing an investigative piece on the Buckley/Babbage case.” Already, Max hovered above the end call button, not wanting to deal with more requests for interviews that she was not going to give. But it was the next thing the reporter said that stopped that from happening. She hadn’t been asking about Max leaving her police job, or why the women were so hard to catch, or even asked a question at all. 

Dawn simply said, “I’m going to prove their innocence, and I need your help to do so.”

The silence that hung on the line was so still that after a few prolongs seconds, the reporter spoke again. “Hello? Maxine? Are you there?”

Max shook herself out of her shock. “Yes, I’m here.” She cleared her throat, looking around the small apartment she now lived in without really seeing it. “What makes you think they’re innocent?” Everyone, _everyone_, who ever talked to her about Lola or Chelsea said they were obviously guilty.

A short pause came, but this one wasn’t silent. Max could hear a few papers being shuffled around before Dawn spoke again. “I spoke to one of the original officers on the case, Josh Lavigne. He was arrested, as I’m sure you know, at the same time as the women for aiding and abetting. He says they’re innocent and being framed. I want to look into that story.” Max had spoken to Josh herself, and she knew he would have said much more than that. “Records show you were on the case - that you were assigned to Lola in particular. You were so close to catching them and then suddenly you quit. Why is that?”

Max put a hand to her forehead. “We need to meet to discuss this better. Tonight, I’ll text you the address. Seven.” She clicked the end button, not bothering to hear if the reporter had agreed. Either she would be there or she wouldn’t.

So, at 7:03 p.m., Max and Daw were seated, drinks and food ordered, and not a word spoken beyond the initial greeting. They kept their silence until their food arrived. Neither moved to touch it, even as the waitress sat it down, said her pleasantries, and left. Once the waitress had made her way through the haze filled pub, Dawn leaned in. 

“Okay then.” Dawn reached into the bag next to her chair, pulling out a note pad and a recorder, and a few thick file folders. She placed the recorder next to the salt and pepper shakers on the table, almost exactly between herself and Maxine. She pushed record. “I have spoken to both Josh Levine and Will Johnson on this matter. Both men were involved in some way with the women and their escapades.” She paused, looking at Max. “Do you know anything about them?”

Max sighed. This was supposed to be different. “I read Levine’s reports and I know what the news was saying. From Will, I only have a one-sentence statement.” She picked up a fry and smirked. “He said, verbatim, ‘They haven’t done anything wrong.’ Mind you, this is in a hospital bed that the women are said to have put him in. He says it wasn’t them who shot him, though. That he was trying to save them from someone else when it happened.”

“Yes, I want to get to that later. And Levine?” Dawn pressed. 

Levine was choppy water. Max was silent for a moment, gathering her thoughts. “This isn’t public knowledge, but Levine’s files were not very helpful. Nothing in them that wasn’t in the women’s files.” She picked her words carefully, hoping the reporter was as bright as Max believed her to be. “They seemed to have been rifled though for this case. All his other files were organized in specific ways, but this one wasn’t. It’s clear someone was trying to hide something. 

Dawn squinted at Max. Then she reached over as turned off the recorder. She sat back in her chair, eyebrows raised. “I take it you don’t think it was Levine hiding something?”

“I know it wasn’t.” Max didn’t offer to expand on the subject, so Dawn nodded. 

“Okay, off the record then. Just for me to know. What did you find in the files?”

Max shrugged. “By the time I got to them, exactly what I said. But it seemed like someone was setting him up. There isn’t one specific element, but some of the notes didn’t look like the were from him. There were some things that didn’t make sense for him to have, regardless of his involvement with the women.” She leaned over, raised her eyebrows, and pushed record. 

Dawn rustled through her notes, allowing Max to see glimpses of what was compiled. The word HUSBAND? In large red letters. Stanton underlined and circled a few different times. Several instances of the name Morrison, followed once or twice by Daughter?. “Here we are.” Dawn had certainly done her homework Max was going to ask to see it when Daw sat a different folder in between them, just to the side of the recorder. It wasn’t full. Compared to the others, it was practically empty. “This is all the information I have on you from one of my sources with your department. It says you left not long after a call where you claim the women escaped yet again. Only you had just declared you had them mere seconds before. I need to know what happened.”

The folder lie between them, both full of everything Max hated about herself and full of everything she had been proud to accomplish. She wasn’t sure who Dawn was in contact with, but she hoped it wasn’t the wrong people. She reached out and took the folder from the table and opened the file, jumping in head first. Just what did Dawn know about her?

Not much, apparently. She almost wanted to laugh. There was a transcript of the phone call before she let Lola and Chelsea go, a few instances where she had been told to back off the case and ignored it, and some other minor papers.

Dawn pulled her attention from the folder. “The phone call is what caught my attention the most. I was able to get a recording of it. Scary, what technology can do these days, but it’s good for my line of work. I studied and studied that recording, eventually discovering I could hear voices in the back ground. 

The sound of Chelsea yelling, ‘We didn’t ask for nobody to believe us, ever. Ever.’ reverberated around her brain, and Max made her choice. “Let me tell you a story. It’s a little long, but please, don’t interrupt.” Max took a small sip of her drink, leaned forward, and spoke. 

“Two known escaped felons, who have been chased all around Australia, are right in front of you, in a ship yard of all places. In fact, they’ve called you there. They’re clearly trying to break into a container, so you run toward them to arrest them, but they wave all that away. You see, there are women in this shipping container, and they need help. They are vulnerable women and they are going to die if something isn’t done immediately. So you do the sensible thing and help the two convicts break into the shipping container.” Max moves the recorder closer to herself. “The astounding thing is, there are women in that container, just like they said. They run to the police backup you brought for safety. You turn, and the felons are gone. You don’t know it yet, but soon those girls will be singing the felons praises because they wouldn’t leave well enough alone until they were saved.” 

Max swallowed and looked from the recorder Dawn. “So you give chase. You run and they run and it’s so long, and it’s so hard, that at the end you’re all really just walking quickly. Everyone is dead tired. One of the felons gives in, sits on the ground she’s so tired.” Max sighed. “You’ve got them. You’ve done what no other detective has done. And so you pull out your magical phone that will lead to their actual capture and you’re so ready to call, but there’s the niggling doubt. Why?”

Dawn is leaning forward now as well, listening intently. “Why what?” she breathes. 

“Why would they risk capture, risk all that, for a group of women who meant next to nothing to them. So you ask. You don’t expect to be yelled at, not for that, but you are. Because these supposed felons, these women. The are tired. They are angry. And they just want it all to end. And what you’re told, in the end, can be summed up into those two sentences, plus one more. They want to be heard.” Max sighed. “So what would you do? Book them? Charge them? Ruin their lives even more?”

Dawn leaned back, blinking. “Guilty people claim innocence all the time. What makes these two any different? Lola had a prior murder charge. Chelsea has an embezzlement charge. How do we know it isn’t all somehow connected?”

Those were good points, most would agree. The flaws in the narrative no one could explain Everyone who knew the women said they would never do any of the things they are being accused of. Still, Max thought she had put few pieces together. 

After taking to the vet from New Zelma’s and to Lola’s son, it seemed the man she had murdered had been an abusive husband. Those opinions could have been biased, but since the man’s mother and brother were both currently incarcerated, she had been to see them, to see if she could find some collaboration for the story. The mother vehemently denied the claims, but the brother - he was a reluctant fountain of information. Then she had spoken to Donna, Lola’s sister, put forth what she knew, and it all came tumbling out. Lola had ran from the law, certainly, but more importantly, she had ran from her husband’s family. 

Chelsea was a more difficult person to pin down. She had been described as quiet, unassuming, basically invisible. According to the company she had worked for and the press, she had stole anywhere from one hundred thousand to millions of dollars, and yet the money was no where to be found in any accounts that had her name connected to them, or any sort of connection at all. A brief talk with Chelsea’s father, where he sounded more annoyed than anything, had resulted in Max stumbling upon Chelsea’s family history with Huntington’s Disease. 

She didn’t say all of that to Dawn just yet, of course. “I guess as much as I’ve studied them to try to find them, I just know who they are as people. So I let them go. The women from the shipping container led us back to a sex trafficking ring that was broken up and put in prison. The back guys are locked up. I can only hope that instead of just roaming, soon Chelsea and Lola will be roaming free.”

By now, their order had grown cold, mostly untouched in front of them. Max leaned forward. “So, how about this. I show you mine, you show me yours. We’ll collaborate. You’ve done the research, but I know these women. Let’s prove their innocence. Together.”

Winters looked across the table, appraising Max, before giving one single nod. “Okay.”

Max reached her hand across the table, and the two women shook.  
~~  
~~  
BREAKING NEWS: BUCKLEY AND BABBAGE FOUND INNOCENT

AUSTRALIA’S MOST WRONGED

BUCKLEY AND BABBAGE: CLEARED OF ALL CHARGES


End file.
